I am a Tombstone Tourist: someone who loves to wander cemeteries. I find it akin to visiting a museum: an opportunity to enjoy rarely seen sculpture, intricate carvings, and amazing architecture, all in a tranquil outdoor setting. This blog is about cemetery culture, art, history, issues of death, and genealogy - subjects of current relevance. I usually find something that intrigues me and makes me want to dig deeper. Care to join me? Read on...

Friday, December 16, 2011

Mishandling the Dead

Dover Air Force Base

The story of the mishandling of military remains at Dover Air Force Base in
Delaware became a national scandal last week after making news headlines all
over the world.

Ret. Gen John Abizaid

Charles C. Carson Center

A panel has
convened to investigate the claims that the Port Mortuary, located at Dover Air
Force Base, incompetently handled the remains of at least 274 U.S. military
personnel from November 2003 to May 2008. An oversight committee will be investigating “violations of
rules and regulations, gross mismanagement, dishonesty and misconduct by
individuals employed at Port Mortuary.”(Port
Mortuary moved to its new home in the Charles C. Carson Center in 2003 and has
handled over 6,300 remains since that time.)

Landfill

Lt. Gen. Darrell D. Jones

The
Air Force has admitted that the number of remains sent to a landfill in King
George’s County, Virginia during this 5-year period was vastly larger than
originally released. The remains of American service men and women from Iraq
and Afghanistan were cremated, taken to the landfill where they were burned,
then dumped with medical waste and buried.Air Force deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and
services, Lt. General Darrell D. Jones has stated that this was the common
practice at the time.

But
how does such a situation become “common practice?”When does it become acceptable to mishandle human
remains?

Family and Friends

Graveside Services

Societies
for over 200-thousand years have given dignified treatment to human remains. Respect for the dead is the number one reason.Burying human remains is a manner in
which to show that respect or esteem for the deceased. Burial is also seen as a
means of closure, an esteemed end to life as we know it, signifying a time to
move on for family and friends.

Hindu Cremation

Body being cremated

Cremation
is another socially acceptable manner for handling remains.In the U.S. it is illegal to cremate
more than one body at a time in a retort, and the body must be placed in an
approved container for the cremation process.After cremation, the ashes may be placed in an urn or other
type of container and then be respectfully buried, scattered or given to the
family.

Burial
at sea is yet another manner that we use to respectfully deal with human
remains.The deceased may be
placed in a casket or enclosed in sailcloth, or their cremated ashes may be
placed in an urn or scattered on the sea.

Book: After We Die

According
to Norman Cantor, author of AFTER WE DIE The Life and Times of the Human
Cadaver, “a corpse maintains a "quasi-human status" granting
it certain protected rights—both legal and moral. One of a corpse's purported
rights is to have its predecessor's disposal choices upheld.” Another cadaver right is to be treated with respect and
dignity.

Landfill garbage

Prison Cemetery

What
is not right or acceptable is to burn the remains and dump them in a landfill
with other waste.Regardless of
how this practice came about, the idea smacks of hypocrisy and abuse.Even our worst criminals who die in
prison are treated with more respect than it appears our military personnel who
died in the service of our country received at Port Mortuary.

Trevor Dean

Col Robert H. Edmondson

The
story of this insolent situation originally broke last month. Air Force
investigators reported that they were tipped off about “serious misconduct” and
“gross mismanagement” concerning the handling of remains at the Dover base back
in 2010 by civilian mortuary workers.According to the BBC News, three senior officials, Colonel Robert H.
Edmondson, Edmondson's top civilian deputy, Trevor Dean, and director of the
mortuary division at Dover, Quinton Keel, were demoted or moved to other
departments.None of the three
were fired.

Gen Norton Schwartz

The
current Air Force chief of staff, General Norton Schwartz
decided last year that burial at sea would be a more dignified way to handle
the remains of service personnel. (This has been one of the more accepted
methods used by the military for many years.)

As
a former reporter, I try hard to remain objective. But as an American citizen,
I am stunned and outraged that such callous and offensive treatment would be allowed,
explained away as “common practice” and viewed as an acceptable manner to
handle the remains of our military personnel – of any person.

If
these charges were levied against a privately held mortuary, the judgment would
be swift and the penalties extensive.The fact that the Air Force chose to see this as acceptable for over five years leaves me wondering about our
humanity.For if we do not have
enough humanity to respect our dead, how are we to continue to respect the
living?

About Me

I
love wine and will take any chance to sip, savor and share it! Hence, Joy’s JOY
of Wine http://joysjoyofwine.blogspot.com,
a weekly blog about all things wine. I've been in the industry for 15
years as a winery owner, marketing director, speaker, writer, wine judge, and
100% vino girl!

I'm
also a professional freelance magazine and book writer uncorking articles about
wine, food, history, travel, cemetery history and culture. My interest in
cemetery culture led to another great, or maybe I should say
"grave" gig, my weekly blog: A Grave Interest http://agraveinterest.blogspot.com where I get to travel around the country and speak about cemetery topics for genealogy, history and
education conferences.

I suppose you could say that wine is my
passion, and cemeteries are my diversion ... into another world.

Subscribe To A Grave Interest

The contents of this site may NOT be used for commercial purposes without explicit written permission from the author and blog owner, Joy Neighbors. All photos are the property of Joy Neighbors and may not be used for financial gain of ANY kind.